Archive Page 5

Italy retro-diary: day 3

Saturday, and you’d think Rome would be a bit calmer. Nope. Anyway, we decided to jump on the bus again (and grab a 2-day pass) and head over to the open market. Sara went ga-ga over the fruits, vegetables, flowers and spices.

Sara dreamily imagining what she could do if we could get this stuff at home.

After that (and a small footwear-related expenditure) we wondered the back streets for a while. I helpful native saw us taking pictures and lamented the state of graffiti. I couldn’t actually tell whether she was sad that there was so much, or sad that there wasn’t any on the adjacent street (where a notable politician lived, with continuous police guard).

The narrow back streets of RomeGhostly pizza in the back streets of Rome

We forgot to do something on Friday at the Vatican—get Bob some stamps! It was very busy, but that’s no excuse not to put pen to paper in the post office.

The Pope's Post Office Postcard writing table.

Back around the bus loop to the Termini station, searched for lunch (only McDonald’s Very Fine Restaurant held any appeal), ate lunch (McDonald’s appeal rapidly vaporized) and back on the bus to the Colloseum. I took a lot of pictures, but basically it’s just like in the movies. Except without the lions, or any wood. Interesting, but you’ve seen it before. We ran to the exit. Or would have, had we been chased by lions.

Us enjoying the thought of good wholesome public entertainment at the Colloseum.Must obey sign.

Pushing through pushy vendors dressed as centurians (but, notably, not as slaves) we caught a Taxi back to the hotel. My luggage still hadn’t arrived (and despite our best washing efforts, my shirt wasn’t getting any more pleasant). I called the airline again, and they were overjoyed to tell me that they’d found my luggage and had put it in storage. They’d get it to me in two days. Great. I went to the airport and got it before they lost it again. On the positive side, there was a cellphone store at the Termini. A really good one. I took some photos of it with my cellphone camera, but they didn’t turn out.

Italy retro-diary: day 2

The Hotel Brasile had a good continental breakfast. Sara wasn’t all that keen on the bread, but I lapped up cheese and ham and milk. The staff maid had squeaky shoes, and was happy to help me pronounce cento-quindici (our room number: Chen-TOW qwin-dee-CHEE).

Being in a strange city, we decided to head back to the train station and jump on a tourist bus. The weather was being cooperative, and the tactic had worked pretty well in London. Even just walking back to the station we passed a bunch of “Rome”y things, like the freedom fountain, and a 12th century bathhouse.

Stuff we saw on day 2 in Rome

Rome is actually pretty small—the reason the bus took a two-hour loop was mostly because of traffic. Anyway, it went round the old Forum, the Colloseum and the Circus Maximus while we went round taking pictures everywhere. We decided to jump off at the Vatican.

St. Peter’s Basilica is a fantastically grand and ostentatious tribute to the Catholic church (Jesus mostly missing). We saw the tombs of the dead popes (“il Papa”), including JP-2’s with a small crowd of mourners. Then into the huge main area (you’d have to see it to believe it) and back out to the oval Square. Undaunted by this unparalleled tribute to glorification, we tried to find the (literally) grotesque stuff that was supposed to be next door. It was actually quite a walk to get to the entrance of the Cistine Chapel, which we were standing next to. (You have to go through the museum.) Great stuff (no photos allowed, but see the “Map Room” picture of the corridor nearby).

Having seen enough frescoes to last, oh say, 24 hours, we headed back (via the Vatican cell phone store and Cape Outlet). (The Pope’s pizzeria was much better than the one next to our hotel.)

Jumping back on the bus while shooing away scarf, sunglass, handbag and tripod vendors we went around the loop again, jumping off near to where we might find the Pantheon. A helpful pirate near the chocolate store gave directions. Having seen a bunch of his work, Raphael must have been tired in tomb there. Afterwards we wondered the back streets, ate (Sara liked the fish), watched tourists at the Trevi Fountain and hiked back to the hotel.

The Pantheon, and a pirate

Italy retro-diary

We’re back from Italy! As a memory aid, I’ll see if I can remember what happened.

Day 1 and a bit: we got to the SFO ticketing desk ten minutes after they’d stopped issuing tickets. Luckily someone came and got our baggage anyway. We made the flight. Barely.

In Amsterdam, my luggage decided that it didn’t like Sara’s luggage, so it went exploring.

Fifteen hours after SFO, in Rome, the baggage people at the Alitalia desk explained that the guys in Amsteram had caught my luggage, and would deliver it to our hotel when it was properly subdued. Sara’s passive luggage was hauled with us on the Leonardo Express into the Termini train station. From there, we walked it to our hotel. There was a Nokia cell phone store on the way (closed). We learned a few important lessons about Roman traffic in our 1/2 mile jaunt.

Anyway, after finding out how hotel electricity works, eating miserable pizza, and preparing my air-travel clothing for use the next day, we woke up to this view from our window. We were in Italy!

Rear window view from Hotel Brazile, Rome

I’m transferring my DATs!

At long last, I’ve got round to porting Marcus Meissner’s DATlib from a Sun/Unix-y to a Win32/Generic platform. I also wrote a quick Dat2Wav.exe program to batch my music from DAT (digital audio tape) to WAV files. It’s available (for free) at my main site, but please report any problems (or successes) here.

Choral concerts done…

Sara and I finished up our concert set with the Santa Clara Chorale where we sang a bunch of ancient and modern Christmas-themed songs. We did two concerts in the Mission at Santa Clara University as well as a few shorter concerts. The final one was at St. Joseph’s Cathedral downtown. Also, Sara has finished school! So we’re going to a party.

The next concert set is in March, where we’re tackling Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb.

Melting coins now naughty…

It seems that the solar experiments we did in the summer were just in time according to a CNN report today. Apparently the U.S. Mint has noticed that the penny is now a bullion coin and consequently have written some new regulations to disallow “recycling” of pennies and nickels. (When we did the experiment, I calculated that the 1c coin was worth about 1.2c in zinc.)

Guess the object…

I was taking this apart when I realized I hadn’t recorded a picture of it for posterity. See if you can guess what it is.

Guess what these parts build.

Halloween costumes

Just in case you were wondering; yes it’s a huge event here. We went to a party (at a friend’s parents’ house) dressed like this. The really scary thing was that nearly everyone recognized who we were supposed to be.

Captain and Sannille

New fan site…

I installed a new ceiling fan over the weekend, so I spent a lot of time at the top of a very tall ladder. It took a few hours to make and finish (paint) a little box to make the beam wider and hide the cable. It took a few hours to run the power cable along the beam through a conduit that was determined not to have a wire run through it. Then it took another few hours to run the cable down to a switchbox, and determine that the switchbox was too full, and mount another one in the garage to take up the excess.

I also discovered that the drywall in the garage is backed with plywood—presumably to make it harder to punch holes in, or easier to screw stuff to. I don’t know what I’d do without my rotozip-like cutting tool. I’ve also learned that removing and replacing large bits of drywall/plywood is easier than removing lots of small bits.

I have no garage light switch at the moment. That’ll come next weekend….

Our new ceiling fan

Oh, and hanging the fan didn’t take long at all. Figures.

Ski Elvis hits the big screen!

It seems that Google Video is now carrying the Ski Elvis short movies. Will dubious fair use of copyright shenanigans never cease? Ski Elvis 2006, “The King Kong”, is halfway done now.